String Bells

The ‘String Bells’, as well as the other instruments in our ‘String’ range, have been designed to be used with our range of Musical Clothing bracelets, belts and tunics.

The strings bells are easy to attach using the Velcro tabs on the clothing and they turn body movements into music. Worn on the tunics the strings can also be played by others and are a great way of feeding attention to those who need it.

There are a range of different ‘String’ instruments available from us, the others are:

• String Agogo
• String Castanets
• String Kenari
• String Pangi

This string bell can help with all aspects of EY development, including:

Sensory and/or Physical needs

Self-played:

• Wearable - play with one or both hands.
• Gently feed them onto drum heads from above to encourage slow, controlled gross motor movements.
• Encourage sound-making through a multitude of methods including wearables.
• Wear one sound on the front and a different sound on the back, can you [as the instrument stand] turn one way and then the other way whilst someone else plays them?

Practitioner-facilitated play:

• Draw the sound-making strings over shoulders, legs, backs, feet?
• Extremely tactile when drawn over hands and fingers, front and back.
• Pull the strings between lightly-clasped fingers too.

Social, emotional and mental health
Stringing them all together in a long snake and drawing them over everyone's laps who are seated in a circle, perhaps encouraging people to grip, hold, relax, let go and pass onwards (share) is a strong community experience. Tactile sensations can help people feel valued, relaxed, de-stressed, comfy, secure, centred.

Communication and interaction
Draw around the circle in a kind of 'tugging' the anchor rope as if everyone is hauling anchor, all in it together, whilst singing, "what shall we do with the drunken sailor".

Cognition and learning

Strings are relatively easy for everyone to make sounds with. We can learn that everyone seems to enjoy making the same sounds as me in this game. We can learn the value of doing and listening and observing all in the same activity.

N.B. For SEN settings: When you purchase this product you get free access to a wide range of downloadable SEND teaching resources. Please visit our SEND resources page to see the range - free resources have a purple "FREE" label alongside.